Thoughts after Three Weeks

It's been just over three weeks that we've been in Daegu.  School has started and we've pretty much become accustomed to life at DIS.  Nancy and I both have had emotional highs and lows since our arrival but we've settled into a groove/routine.  Here some random observations on our experiences so far...

School has been awesome.  The kids are (for the most part) great.  They are respectful - particularly the girls - and they are very good in math.   It's pretty cool to teach kids who work hard, understand and appreciate the math and have zero attitude.  My AP Calculus class is really amazing.  The students are so smart, motivated, personable...pretty much every positive attribute you can think of.  And they have no trace of arrogance...it's very,very cool.

In Daegu there is not much English spoken when you are out and about.  It's not a very diverse city especially for a city of 2.5 million people.  Maybe we all expect to hear "American" spoken everywhere but that's not the case here.  We manage to communicate but there have been some interesting occurrences.  For example, do NOT separate a bunch of bananas at the grocery store.  We were at the store and decided we didn't really need to buy 22 bananas (the smallest bunch we could find) and I broke off a group of 6...BIG MISTAKE.  We brought them to the checkout and you would have thought that we had committed a major crime.  Needless to say we were NOT allowed to buy any bananas!

The Korean people are very fashion conscious and apparently absolutely LOVE coffee...or coffee shops.  They are literally everywhere.  Think we have a lot of Starbucks in the States?  Think again.  The sheer number of coffee shops in Korea is staggering. As for fashion..we're walking around the grocery store in our typical Florida outfit - shorts, t-shirt, flip flops the Korean women look like they are going out to a club.  Black dress, high heels, perfect hair and makeup...not that I'm complaining but it's a little disconcerting. The men (especially the young men) are very metrosexual...almost androgynistic.  it's not unusual to see them looking like Justin Bieber with a man purse...except Asian.  Is that racist?

There's a typhoon coming (am I still in Florida?) so that's all.  More to come and I will try to post more often.